| Building Scotland: Celebrating Scotland’s Traditional Building Materials - Edited by Moses Jenkins |
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In taking shelter from the weather, Scotland, like the rest of the world, has created its own traditional building environment and, in so doing, has given its inhabitants a sense of place and identity.
Now, for the first time, these traditions are celebrated in an attractive hardback. Edited by Moses Jenkins and with a foreword by First Minister, Alex Salmond, Building Scotland devotes individual chapters to 14 of our most significant traditional building materials. Each chapter is written by an expert in that particular field while every one is made visually impressive by the photography of Ms Sam Sills. Among the raw materials examined are stone, timber and slate, each chapter revealing regional variations. There are chapters, too, on the use of plaster, paint, lead and glass.
Readers might find the opening section somewhat daunting in places dealing, as it does, with timber and its uses through the ages from crannogs to the last mainline railway viaduct still in use. The description – of necessity – gets a bit heavy when entering the realm of complicated roofing structures but as Sam Sills’ full-page photograph of the hammer-beam ceiling of Stirling Castle’s Great Hall demonstrates, a striking image can bring words vividly to life. To describe this publication as informative would be a colossal understatement – it is brimful of historical goodies. For example, did you know you can build a wall using earth?
Now, a wee word about traditional Christmas cards showing drawings of twee, snow-covered cottages with “bullseye” circles in their window glass. Wrong! Apparently such glass was seldom used for glazing. This comes from the chapter on glass which also tells us why sash and case windows became so widely used.
You’ll recall those picturesque, orange-coloured clay pantiles to be found atop fishermen’s cottages and farm steadings throughout Fife? Do you ever wonder why so many of our East Coast buildings are roofed in this way while West Coast roofs tend to be more conventionally slated? All to do with Scotland’s diverse geology.
It’s tempting to go on pulling out even more historical building plums – but I won’t spoil the book by giving too much away. I’ll end by quoting our First Minister: “Scotland’s traditional buildings and the materials used to build them, are a reflection . . . of our success as a nation – of our talent, practicality, creativity and ingenuity.” |
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